HOW TO MAKE HERSELF AGREEABLE TO EVERYONE

A model and activist breaks a self-imposed silence about her professional life to examine the dark underside of the fashion industry.

When Russell began modeling at 16, she was unaware that she was entering a world where a woman’s value was based as much on looks as on a willingness to “do anything” for (male) photographers. Her first experiences rejecting an S&M–style shoot confused her not only because of the photographer’s annoyed response but also because of her inability to make him understand that the pictures might jeopardize a future career in politics. Russell soon realized that if she was going to become a successful model, she would need to let “the photographer feel he control[ed]” her. However, the intimacy she performed as a model often left her open to unwanted advances from photographers and their clients, who treated models as “disposable” sexual commodities. Over time, she became a “good actress” and learned to play the game, scoring lucrative contracts with the likes of Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren that allowed her to pay for a college education at Columbia. Unable to ignore the abuses of power she saw in her work, Russell began to speak out, first through a TED Talk about “Whiteness, beauty [and] privilege.” Later, she helped found the Model Mafia, a collective in which models could discuss their experiences within a brutal system that exploits girls and young women who, unlike the (largely white) supermodels celebrated by the media, lived “far from family [and made] less than a livable wage.” Intimate and thoughtful, Russell’s book offers a disturbing look at the hidden ways women are objectified and degraded in an industry that profits from creating illusions of beauty that feed an endless—and damaging—circle of misogynist desire.

A sharp, provocative memoir about an evergreen topic.